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* Is There A Teleological Abridgement of Kierkegaard's Dialectic?


An Essay In Three Parts By:

Carl Lumma
(812) 857-0851
clumma@indiana.edu
P135 Section #3961
October 9, 1995.



Part 1: Abridgement

Kierkegaard has devised a system of three parts by which he explains
various motivations that affect human behavior.  Each part explains a
motivation, provides a historical example of a life driven by that
motivation, and labels an negative emotion that such a motivation must
inevitably produce.  Thus we have the aesthetic, which is a life
governed by the pursuit of pleasure, the ethical, which is life governed
by a notion of duty, and the faith, which is governed by god.

The aesthetic man seeks to satisfy his desires at each moment, following
his every whim, no matter how fleeting.  His greatest enemy is boredom,
which he avoids by not allowing any one thing to occupy him for too
long -- a device Kierkegaard calls "the rotation method" in his
Either/Or.  Kierkegaard gives us Don Juan as the epitome of this
lifestyle, a man perfectly content in everything but his despair, the
feeling of meaninglessness that pervades his every trifle.  In
Either/Or, an aesthetic writes his friend:

	In addition to my many other acquaintances, I still have one
	intimate confidant -- my despair; in the midst of my joy, in the
	midst of my work he beckons me, calls me to one side, even if my
	body remains in the same place.  My despair is the most faithful
	mistress I have known; no wonder, then, that I love in return.

The ethical man seeks to fulfill his duty to society.  Kierkegaard uses
Socrates to illustrate the ethical motivation, as Socrates was a man who
gave all of his time, and ultimately his life, because of his conviction
to teaching what was considered to be dangerous material.  Yet the
ethical man suffers guilt, a feeling that he has not lived up to his
ideal -- not completed his duty to his fullest ability.

The faithful man lives according to his belief in god.  Kierkegaard's
example is Abraham, and he wrote Fear And Trembling to examine faith as
it is explained in the Bible.  For Kierkegaard, faith is the only
mechanism by which we can accept the most difficult kind of truth.  It
is inevitable doubt in this "eternal" truth, and the irresistible
questioning of the nature and origin of faith that give rise to fear and
trembling.

Now the fact that Kierkegaard recognizes exactly three things as the
entire scope of human behavior seems quite odd.  Why does he not choose
four, or two?  Moreover, how can any one man, having thought the matter
through to the fullest extent he possibly can, say that he has defined
the potential of all humans' behavior?  Finally, why does Kierkegaard
borrow the Hegelian term "dialectic" in the first place, when the only
significant similarity between his dialectic and Hegel's is that they
each exist in three parts?  For these valid questions there are not
exactly two explanations.  They both recognize that Kierkegaard is a
negative reaction to Hegel.  First: as the Christian church made its
holidays coincide with pagan festivals so that its believers could not
be polygamous, so Kierkegaard might have chosen a three-part system, and
indeed the term dialectic itself to undermine Hegel.  Second: it is less
likely but also feasible that Kierkegaard chose a three part, all-
encompassing explanation of an extremely complex phenomenon and named it
"dialectic" to mock Hegel.  For if Kierkegaard is arrogant in assuming
he can explain all of human behavior with a three part system, then what
is Hegel for attempting to explain all of history and even existence
itself with such a system?

It is of no consequence if one maintains any objective uncertainty
regarding the above coincidence of terminology.  Existentialists after
Kierkegaard have rendered Hegel of more value to historians than to
philosophers, removing the need for any coincidence.  Now if Kierkegaard
objects to our tampering, he must claim that the above coincidence is
not a coincidence at all and that he has indeed explained all of human
behavior with a system of exactly three parts.  If he then does this, he
must also explain our tampering in terms of one of the original parts,
and this is quite difficult to do.  It is, after all, this difficulty
that has provoked us to tamper in the first place.

So a fourth part of this dialectic might be called self-actualization
(if we borrow this term from Maslow, it is not because we refute
Maslow), or the motivation to satisfy one's potential.  All living
things are born with a potential.  The psychoanalysts called this
libidinal energy (which is only necessarily sexual in Freud).  It is the
energy that motivates us into productive action.  And, when productive
action is impossible, as it was thought to be during the great
depression, it is the energy that motivated Franklin Roosevelt to do
"something."  Self-actualization is a measure of how efficiently this
potential is used.  Notice it is not a measure of what portion of this
potential has been used, as this would imply our potential is fixed at
birth.  Rather, the more efficiently one uses his potential, the greater
his potential becomes; it is not the candle that burns twice as bright
burns half as long, but a penny saved is a penny earned.  It is by this
nature that self-actualization becomes a reasonable pursuit in life.  If
there were an end, we could not classify it with the other three parts
of Kierkegaard's dialectic, because it would be possible to escape
despair; what ethical man would feel guilty upon having achieved
ethical perfection?

For a historical example of a life led by self-actualization, we need
look no further than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Notice that we choose him
because he is famous for using his potential, and not because we make
any judgement that he has done this better than any other man in
history, or even any other artist of his genre.  For History is all too
fond of making a hero of genius, especially when it has perceived genius
in all the wrong places.  Wasn't Mozart frowned upon by his jealous
peers?  And what of Bach, whose music was only half-published until a
century after his death?  Why should we believe today's critics, when
they proclaim Schumann a genius, instead of the critics of Schumann's
day, when they proclaimed him a failure?  What of Kierkegaard himself?

This, then, is the origin of misery, that feeling of rejection that
necessarily proceeds from the self-actualizing life.  Mozart, in order
to free his work of the constraints placed upon it by his court
position, became the first free-lance composer of western music, and
died in poverty because of it.  And the self-actualizer who is accepted
during his life must nevertheless face his own doubt about the success
of his work, because he knows the opinions of the critics cannot be
trusted in any case -- musicology still puzzles over Tchaikovsky's rash
self-criticism, and Einstein received the Nobel prize for his work on
the photoelectric effect, not for relativity.  Suicide can provide no
escape from misery for the self-actualizer; what activity could be more
destructive to one's potential?


Part 2:  A dialog with tamper-resistant Kierkegaard.

T-RK: If the use of his potential satisfies his desire, then isn't the
self-actualizer an aesthetic?

L: No, because as the aesthetic is concerned with what he wants to do
with his day, the self-actualizer is concerned with what makes best use
of his day.  Whereas the aesthetic is concerned with avoiding boredom,
the self-actualizer is concerned with productivity.  While the aesthetic
cannot be truly productive because of the rotation method, the self-
actualizer learns to recognize boredom as a necessary part of learning.
As Thoreau said, "It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.  The
question is what we are busy with."

T-RK: What of the ethical?  Hasn't the self-actualizer simply replaced
the notion of duty to society with the notion of duty to himself?

L: And hasn't the faith simply replaced the notion of duty to society
with duty to god?  Hasn't the aesthetic replaced it with a notion of
duty to the id?  The self-actualizer might also feel it necessary to do
some very unethical things in order to satisfy his potential.  Look no
further than Nixon.

T-RK: And what of faith?  Hasn't your self-actualizer replaced the
notion of faith in god with that of faith in himself?  Isn't his misery
like fear and trembling except that it stems from doubt over the quality
of his art rather than from doubt about the intentions or existence of
God?

L: That sounds like a substitution made over 10,000 fathoms to me, but
if you are willing to bend your notion of faith to include faith in
anything, it is one I will entertain.

The problem here is that no matter what the faith happens to be in, the
self-actualizer has no room for it.  His energy is far too precious to
spend on believing things which are not supported by evidence or that
make no logical sense.  In fact, the self-actualizer does not believe
anything -- no matter how well supported by evidence or compelling it
may be -- unless it has a direct and profound bearing on his everyday
life.  Issues like the origin of life, the existence of god, and the
nature of truth are not important to him.  He does not even try to
believe in himself, or in the quality of his work, as you suggest; he
knows he cannot escape misery.  He is concerned with spending his energy
on productive things only.

T-RK: I will try to be less stubborn in the future.


Part 3: Conclusion

Now that we have added a fourth part, do we say there cannot be a fifth?
No, there is, in principle, an infinite number of parts one might add in
this fashion, although the difference between each part would decrease
as new parts were added.  Notice that it is truly in the spirit of the
existential tradition that we have modified Kierkegaard's dialectic;
whether or not any of this abridgement is purposeful is a question left
for the individual to answer.